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Our Opinion

The Samsung Galaxy S9 Plus 64GB is a significantly better phone than the Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus (4GB RAM, 64GB), and is also significantly better value for money. What should you buy? Go for the Samsung Galaxy S9 Plus 64GB!

Water-resistant (IP 68 certification), and with Gorilla Glass 5 protection on both front and rear

Apart from fingerprint recognition, you also have iris or facial recognition options for unlocking the device - iris is blazing fast, but requires some careful alignment - facial recognition works pretty well, but does require good lighting

The new on-screen navigation works well and buttons can finally be re-mapped - the home button has nice haptic feedback

With its bold, exquisite, elongated shape, and borderless "infinity" display, the Galaxy S8 is one gorgeous piece of technology - arguably the best designed Android phone to date

The exceptionally bright Infinity display is gorgeous, and a chart-topper in terms of sunlight visibility - and colors are even punchier than before

Samsung's TouchWiz software is now more polished than ever, and gives a thoughtfully conceived software experience

You can also use the phone as a mobile workstation with the DeX desktop dock - creating an Android "desktop" experience - which could be pretty handy

The new 18.5:9 aspect ratio for the display works great for portrait gaming, browsing and multi-tasking

The Exynos chipset powering the phone delivers a chart-topping performance in both CPU and GPU benchmarks - the Mali-G71 MP20 GPU is impressive too - overall, the performance is class leading, and brimming with horsepower

The camera is state-of-the-art and pretty much the same as the already great camera on the S7, with one notable improvement - low light photography - the new Multi-Frame Image Processing delivers noticeably cleaner and sharper low light photos - overall now, this camera is right up there with the best in the business - the iPhone 7 and the Google Pixel

The front camera is very good too, and a major upgrade from the S7 in terms of image quality - Samsung has also included a big collection of filters, stickers and dynamic facial effects to raise your selfie game

Good audio quality

Very good battery life, a little better than the already good battery life of the Galaxy S7

Samsung's AI Engine Bixby is a decent add-on too, although a lot of the functionality, including voice activation will come in later

The S8+ is is really versatile when it comes to connectivity too with things like Gigabit LTE support, bluetooth audio streaming to two devices simultaneously, and presence of DisplayPort video output over Type-C

Absolutely lusciousdesign, continuing the design language that was introduced with the Galaxy S8 series (which is not a bad thing at all) - and it has some really sizzling color options in purple and blue, which really helps those supple curves stand out - the body colors look deep, rich and ever-changing thanks to the way the glossy glass catches the light - you will be hard pressed to find anything remotely as elegant, and beautiful in the Android market

The biggest design change is on the back, where the fingerprint reader moves below the camera module - this corrects the worst design mistake of both Galaxy S8 phones and the Note 8

Water resistant body

The tall, 18:9, minimal bezel, 6.2-inch AMOLED screen is absolutely gorgeous and even brighter than last year's (15 percent brighter, in fact) - and the sexy dual-curved design adds to the charm

Samsung software on top of Android adds some useful extras, extending the core functionality of Android - it is one of the better, more refined UIs in the Android world

Whiplash-fast performance backed by the super powerful Samsung's Exynos 9810 (similar to the Snapdragon 845 in terms of performance) - performance is top-notch as expected under all use cases

Terrific camera - the first to bring a mechanical dual-aperture lens from DSLRs to the much tinier mobile phone, a feature that's designed to let in more light, reduce image noise and generally make your photos a lot better

The image quality in well lit situations is top-notch

Low light performance often borders on astounding - with the amount of brightness & lack of noise you will find in the shots (thanks to the dual aperture lens) - although its not very consistent (some low light photos are oddly washed out)

The Galaxy S9 Plus also one-ups the excellent Galaxy S9 with a second rear camera for taking portrait photos - they come out well with a good bokeh effect

The super-slow motion video mode is pretty cool too, and when you frame the shot well, can give some incredible result

The selfie camera is good too, and has a new Selfie Focus mode, which uses software (and not a second lens) to create a depth effect with the front-facing camera, similar to the Pixel 2, or the iPhone X

On the whole the cameras on the Galaxy S9+/S9 compare well with the those on the other top camera phones - the Google Pixel 2, and the iPhone X - it's a toss up between these 3 - the Galaxy S9+ can produce some truly exceptional shots especially in the dark, but perhaps the iPhone X and the Pixel 2 are just a bit more consistent all round, everything considered

Dual-speaker system is excellent, and makes for loud, rich audio - and results in one of the best speaker experience of any smartphone, ever

Call quality is fantastic too, with the AKG tuning really paying off

Also has the good old-fashioned headphone jack! (that's missing in a lot of other flagships now)

Good (though not exceptional) battery life - will definitely last the work day on a single charge

Supports fast charging (although it's not the fastest around)

Supports wireless charging

DeX Pad support is another cool feature that enhances the Desktop Experience Samsung introduced on last year’s flagship Galaxy phones

On the whole, while outside of the display, the S9+ isn’t a class leader in any category, but it’s good enough in all of them that the whole package makes for a great flagship phone - it will compete with the Pixel 2/XL and the iPhone X for the title of the best smartphone - which one of these 3 you might choose will depend on what specific things you value

2-minute Review [Negatives]

The new fingerprint reader position at the back will certainly raise more than a few eyebrows - it's too high up and right next to the camera - which is not the most convenient placement

The all-glass body is quite slippery, if you don't use a case

The S8+ is also generally quite tall for one handed use - reaching the notification area, for instance, can be tricky - similarly, the on-screen navigation buttons are placed pretty low relative to the overall height of the S8+ and can also be hard to reach

While the 18.5:9 aspect ratio is futuristic, and certainly comes in handy while browsing, and gaming, but most video/image content is still not made for such a wide screen, so will usually be wasteful of the extra space

Fragile glass front and back means you should buy a case day 1

The new face-unlock tool is not particularly secure (it might have been better for Samsung to build out a more refined version before rushing in to compete with the similar feature on the iPhone X)

The 3D avatar software is again not that well executed - the AR Emojis track your expressions poorly and need far more customization options

There’s also still no compelling use case for Bixby, Samsung's AI agent (though of course you have no compulsion to use it, and can instead keep using the Google Assistant)

While the camera is great generally, it can sometime make low-light photos look blurry and lack detail - even though brightness levels is excellent and noise is minimal - so its sometimes a double edged sword

Battery life is good, but not exceptional - some of the competition is ahead here

Among the two S9 variants themselves (standard, and plus), a lot of people might prefer the Galaxy S9, as it's a little easier to handle - the incremental improvements in the S9+ on the other hand (even bigger screen, more RAM, and a secondary rear camera) are arguably not that significant

Everything considered, S8 owners can skip the upgrade - the S9+ is excellent all-round, and incrementally better - but it's not a monumental change from the S8

Apart from the iPhone X and the Pixel 2/XL, the S9+ will also face tough competition now from lower priced flagships like the OnePlus 5T, which are almost as good on most of the important counts

The S9+ will also face direct competition from Samsung's Galaxy Note 8, which is pretty similar in many of the meaningful ways, but might come at a lower price